Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: A necessary evil

Yes, there were working hydraulic and steam based machines in ancient times, but they were mere curiosities and gimmicks since it was so much cheaper to use slaves to do work. Whether materials science would have been enough to start a steam revolution back then is another matter.

Some years back, we used to get £10 per month towards having a home internet connection when it wasn't assumed that the vast majority would have one anyway. But eventually, market penetration reached the point where it was assumed most people would have it anyway and it became a taxable benefit and the company stopped the payments.

AFAIK, our company has no process in place for checking on private use of company mobile phones. To this day, I've never owned my own mobile phone. On the other hand, I'm not a dick about using it. Most of my personal calls are to my wife to let her know roughly when I'll be home since the job involves highly variable home arrival times and occasional nights away. I'd class those as work related calls.

I do like my coffee, but £765 for their cheapest one is bit outside what I'd be prepared to pay, no matter how good it is. But for those who buy their branded cardboard cup of coffee on the way to work could be saving money within a couple years, including the cost of the insulated, lidded travel mug :-)

Nice! Other, less civic minded people might have chosen a similar route but sold them instead.

"any sort of season ticket is only really worth if if you're doing ~5 days"

With all sorts of electronic ticking systems around these days, it can't be beyond the wit or ability of the transport networks to sell bulk journeys instead of blanket season tickets. Why buy a year of unlimited use on a specific journey when they could just as easily sell you 100 or 200 journeys? With hybrid WFH, there's a market for this. Same should apply to toll roads/bridges/tunnels and low emission charging zones.

Re: Can of worms

"but I'll be working downstairs, and the router is upstairs. Damn!"

Ok, so for work related reason you went upstairs to reboot the router. How are you planning on getting back to your desk without going down the stairs? Have installed a firemans pole or something? :-)

Yes, you can legally have pre-marital sex from age 16, but if you get her pregnant, you can't get married until 18 without a trip to Gretna Green as mentioned by another poster ;-)

It's unclear whether a marriage in Scotland between English residents under the age of 18 is recognised under English law. I don't think it's been tested yet

Re: Wrong question answered

and declaring Icelandic banks as terrorist groups.

"The point was that the UK (and much of europe) have a bizarre feature where the age of consent/marriage is 16 but child porn laws are imported from America and use 18"

It's 18 in the UK now. Until recently, it was 16 but only with parental consent.

Re: The sound of Perseverance

"Not sure why they care so much about getting me to agree with them."

Are you in charge of the outgoing spam filters? :-))

Re: Ego Musk for President

Well played :-)

Re: Ego Musk

"- Model Y: No manual release in back doors, climb into front and use manual release there"

I'm not sure that would be a road legal car in the UK or EU. I'm no expert, but I think that would fail the safety specs.

Re: Allow me to warm up a bag of microwave popcorn...

You'll need to amp it up if you want to stay current.

Re: The good big companies are overstaffed by 2x.

"Google has whole swathes of people doing stuff that's never significantly going to affect their top line (i.e. unnecessary) and they encourage them to take time out from the unnecessary stuff they're supposed to be working on to work on stuff that's even more unnecessary."

I've always suspected that that is a small minority of Google staff. Devs probably. Everyone else, not so much. What "20% time, personal projects" might benefit Google coming from HR, Accounts, Sales, Marketing, Janitorial staff etc?

Re: Certificates

"OK, boomer. Your made-up statistics created to 'prove' what Tory voters think are just _so_ persuasive.

I assume from that comment that you didn't go look at the Department for Transport I linked which has figures even as afar back as when Labour were last in power. Likewise, I linked to the Lefty-biased BBC, which should be right up your street.

"The simple reality is that younger drivers have actually passed a proper test, and older drivers haven't.

I'm not sure what you mean by "older drivers" not doing a "proper test". IIRC, my grandads driving test back in about 1933 was little more than putting it in gear and driving a little. In fact, it wasn't even compulsory until 1935, so maybe you're only talking about licenced drivers older than 86 who may have opted to not take a test?

As for the current test, it's not all that different to what I passed back in 1979/80. A few extras added in, some stuff removed (eg 3 pt turns and reversing around a corner). The "theory test" was shorter and carried out by the examiner in the car after the driving part. Oh, I should add that the show me part of the new test regarding using the controls and especially checking fluid levels was something that was assumed back then. The vast majority of people with a car back then would know the basics of maintenance and it wasn't expected they'd need to be "tested" on such basic and simple knowledge.

I'd certainly not argue that the new test is a little more comprehensive, but knowing both what my test involved and how the test has changed a little over the years, I'd certainly never claim from lack of knowledge that one of them is not a "proper" test.

Re: Certificates

"Young car drivers made up 18 per cent of all car drivers involved in reported road accidents in 2013. However, this is considerably higher than the 5 per cent of miles they account for."

See here

"The Department for Transport (DfT) says there is no evidence older drivers are more likely to cause an accident, and it has no plans to restrict licensing or mandate extra training on the basis of age."

See here

"As can be seen in the above chart, drivers aged 16–19 were 38% more likely to be killed or seriously injured than drivers aged 40–49, and drivers aged 20–29 were 65% more likely to be killed or seriously injured than drivers aged 40–49."

See here

It appears multiple sources of real world statistics show your personal observations to be incorrect.

Re: A country

...or the paper ones!!

Re: Certificates

The age and thus the wear and tear of the paper alone would make it hard to forge. Like my non-photo paper licence, a forged copy could never look old enough to be believable without the skills of a proper (and expensive) forger :-)

And as you say, the older ones tend to be less temporally limited. Mine is valid until I'm 70. Why would I change it to one I have to have replaced every so many years? On the other hand, I'm almost 60, so a more fungible 10 year renewal process is not really an issue after my next birthday.

Re: Opaque

He's just doing it for the Halibut. He's not Anglering for votes.

Re: Instead of 'right to repair', manufacturers should have a 'requirement to warranty'.

"(unless of course they shelved it for use as a 'warranty' replacement for someone else)."

That is very likely and not unusual, depending on manufacturer. As a field engineers, we get parts sent out from the OEM marked as "Factory Refurbished and Tested" as well as new parts. This is a large Asian OEM. On the other hand, simple fixes to some HP printers results in an entire module being sent out with a "Do NOT RETURN" label and what seems like a large and expensive item, eg an entire duplexer unit that only needs a couple of new plastic gears (info presented based on actual jobs done in the last two week)

"What's the problem?"

The lack of democracy? According to the article, a clear majority of people, on both sides of the political fence, were in favour. But tiny minority of politicians, voted in by those people, were probably influenced by well funded lobbyists and managed to kill something the majority wanted.

Re: Interstate commerce?

Not being in the US and having no idea how internal trade works between States, I suppose the argument could be put forward that some States have legalised weed, but in other States, possession is a crime so no, isyou still can't export a legal item to a State where purchase or possession is illegal. In the specific case, Twitter or Facebook et al would be importing-exporting illegal content between States. I think. Maybe. Possibly :-)

Re: If you say so...

"and mostly because it's less of a mouthful than whatever the académie française might dream up."

And that's where their problem begins. They seem to almost exclusively come up with descriptive phrases to replace the "loan" words. Those loan words were, in many cases, created from Latin or Greek roots (Like French itself!) or made up from parts of existing words intended to convey a new meaning. After all, my name is John, not Yohanan nor it's English translation of "Graced by God"

"though I have to admit Chinglish seems rather more likely a future."

Having read user guides and service manuals in that language, I suspect that will be the road to de-evolution!

Re: Iceland

"Of course the Icelanders are probably far more sensible than to indulge in professional computer game-playing."

No, they'd rather spend time stripping down and souping up a 4WD so they can drive it up a near vertical cliff face :-)

I do wonder if those tyres actually get some grip to propel the vehicle forwards or if the soil is just acting as reaction mass.

Re: nice story

For "clicker" substitute "clinker",

Yes. My brain was saying clinker but my fingers typed clicker. I have no idea why :-)